


to speak when i am dead

by kannerin



Category: Naruto
Genre: Angst, Ghost Haruno Sakura, Ghost Hatake Kakashi, Ghost Uchiha Sasuke, Ghost Uzumaki Naruto, Lots of Angst, Mindscape Sweep, Multi, iruka is having a time(tm), its not a good one, nikkou and her brigade of geckos
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-17
Updated: 2021-01-23
Packaged: 2021-03-15 15:42:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,128
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28815816
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kannerin/pseuds/kannerin
Summary: "Sensei there's ghosts by the Memorial Stone.""Don't be ridiculous, there's no such thing as... Sweet mother of Chakra, there's ghosts by the Memorial Stone."(Or an AU in which Wave goes very badly for Team 7, and a new team is left to the legacy of blood and death that is Team 7)
Relationships: Dai-nana-han | Team 7 & Hatake Kakashi, Dai-nana-han | Team 7 (Naruto) & Original Character(s), Original Female Character/Original Non-Binary Character, Umino Iruka & Uzumaki Naruto, Yamanaka Inoichi & Original Female Character(s)
Comments: 1
Kudos: 41





	1. In which Team 7 has a very bad day

**Author's Note:**

> this is,,,, very sad. i am very sorry if you expected light hearted ghost story.
> 
> y'ain't gonna find it here, buddy

Ino is with her team, turning in a signed D-rank, when Sakura bursts through the door, panting, with a kunai and three senbon in the flesh of her left shoulder. Ino gasps, going to run forward, before feeling the cold, sandpaper feel of Shikamaru’s shadows holding her ankles in place.

“Trust me,” he hisses in her ear, pulling her back to Team 10.

Sakura straightens up, pulling at scabbed wounds all along her midriff and side.

“Team 7,” she chokes, blood painting her lips a garish cherry. “Team 7, killed protecting Tazuna the bridge builder from Momochi Zabuza and an accomplice.”

Sakura wavers on her feet, before pitching forward like a puppet with no puppeteer. Iruka-sensei practically vaults over the mission desk, pressing gentle fingers to Sakura’s neck. His face is flat and blank when he straightens up. Ino dreads the answer, but knows what’s coming anyway.

“Dead,” Iruka-sensei says, and the shadows retreat from Ino’s ankles.

Ino watches in horror as two ANBU drop from the rafters, taking Sakura’s… body to T&I, because Sakura had no mission report, no way to know how they all died. Well, at least the rest of Sakura’s team.

Ino goes home in shock, taking the heavy quilt from her parent’s room and curling up on their couch. She smoothes her fingers over the purple cord in the tie for her ponytail. The tie is simple, a braid made of cream cord and purple cord, gifted to her by Sakura after their first meeting. Ino pulls the quilt over her head, pressing herself into the corner of the couch. Only then does she let the tears fall.

~~~~~~

In all her years of working in Konoha’s Interrogation forces, Jyuyuuki has only had to use her modified Hiden two times, on the Yondaime and the previous jinchuuriki of the Kyuubi. She dreads having to use it a third time on her niece’s best friend.

But alas, the Hokage has ordered her to find out how the Copy ninja and his students died, so in the spirit of not committing treason Jyuyuuki must go poke around in a dead girl’s head.

She isn’t looking forward to this at all.

Someone pokes her in the arm with a finger. She slaps at it without looking. There’s a quiet noise of pain before she turns her head, raising an eyebrow at her brother.

“You are the worst little sister ever.”

Jyuyuuki sticks her tongue out at Inoichi, before whacking at him again when he hits her with the flat side of a kunai.

“I yield, holy shit, stop hitting me!”

Inoichi reluctantly stops, slipping the kunai back in his weapon pouch. Jyuyuuki sighs, turning back to the door she’s been standing in front of for a half an hour. Beyond the door lies the body of Haruno Sakura.

Wasn’t it a damn surprise that out of the powerhouses on her team, the civilian born girl is the only one with the strength to get back to Konoha.

Or was the only one alive to get back.

She sighs again, pushing the door open with her hip and slinking inside, with Inoichi right on her heels. In the room, only opened twice before on the night after the Kyuubi Attack, is a single autopsy bed, and complex machinery along one wall.

The room smells like formaldehyde and iron, with large spatters of dry blood on and around the table. New red spatters are being formed on top from sluggishly bleeding wounds on the girl’s shoulders, side and back. Over top of the scent of iron is the scent of a garishly floral smell Jyuyuuki recognizes as the perfume Fukuru uses to cover up their assassinations.

With how engulfed in the history of this room the scent of blood is, Fukuru’s efforts fell short.

Jyuyuuki thanks her spouse for trying though.

She strides across the small room, hooking wires and machines together, all meeting in the middle at the lamp-like structure above the corpse. Inoichi flips the single power switch on the side of the machine, and Jyuuyuki brings the headset down to her face, closing her eyes and dropping into the girl’s rapidly destabilizing mindspace with the slight flicker of chakra that denotes her use of the Mindspace Sweep technique.

~~/~~

Jyuuyuki opens her eyes to Sakura’s mindscape, already falling apart and destroying the doors to memories that could have been important. But Jyuuyuki only needs to find the newest memory, and she runs down the hall, wrenching open the door at the hallway’s end.

Jyuuyuki snaps to awareness to watch Sakura sprinting towards a huge bridge, and she’s tugged along after staying still. She tugs back, and gets stuck at 15 feet. She huffs, watching as the girl freezes at the killing intent coming from the rapidly dispersing fog. Once the fog disperses completely, Sakura tugs the bridge builder behind her, pulling out a kunai with shaky hands. The Demon of the Mist ignores her though, still trading blows with Hatake. Over to the side, the Kyuubi Jinchuuriki is trying and failing to hit the dark haired shinobi assisting Momochi.

Not even a minute after switching her attention to trying to find the Uchiha, Jyuuyuki hears her small tether scream, and follows Sakura’s eyes to the dark haired shinobi and Uzumaki.

Just in time to watch the blond tumble backwards off the bridge, left arm turned into a veritable pincushion of senbon. They were obviously laced in a paralytic, as the blond appears to be stiff as a board. Jyuuyuki gets tugged along as Sakura leans over the side, watching her teammate disappear under the water.

Sakura screams, turning and leaping at the brunet attacking them. She gets three senbon to the arm in retaliation, but they aren’t dosed, and Jyuuyuki already knows what happened to her, so she turns back to Hatake.

Who is losing painfully to Momochi.

Oh boy.

Sakura shrieks in pain behind her, and flees from her attacker, ducking around Hatake and Momochi. Hatake pauses, taking precious seconds to summon a huge mastiff, which Momochi uses to turn and swing at the girl. She’s almost far enough away, but not quite. The tip of the huge sword slices down the line of her spine, and she stumbles, before the mastiff allows her on his back and they disappear towards the end of the bridge. Jyuuyuki follows, watching as Hatake goes down hard, bleeding from a long diagonal gash in his chest.

The Uchiha never shows, and Jyuuyuki is forced to assume he died before getting to the bridge. Smoke billows over the treetops, and Sakura whimpers behind her as the scene fades and snaps to sparking static.

(Her report to the Hokage is short and blunt. When she gets home, she curls up in Fukuru's arms and sobs. This was the worst way for her niece to loose her best friend.)

~~~~~~

Kiju is… tired. He is so very tired. He’s the dead-last of his class, unbecoming of a Hyuuga, even if he is no better than a servant in the Main House’s eyes.

This is his only chance. His only chance to prove to the Main House that the Branch House can produce talented shinobi besides Neji-sama. That they are slowly shattering the power the Hyuuga could hold.

(He ignores the screaming pleads of a young girl in the background while walking through the compound. He figures it’s another of his many cousins, punished for a mistake some stuffy elder made up. She screams again, simply her name this time. Sakura… he doesn’t recall a cousin by that name but oh well. He has so many he most likely won't notice her being gone.)

~~/~~

Kokosa is the only Nara in her entire clan to enjoy the work she puts towards her ideas. The other Nara have done incredible things, true, but they half ass things, find shortcuts so they can go back to playing board games or watching paint dry or whatever her clansmen get up to in their spare time.

Privately, Kokosa despises her clansmen for being this lazy. They could be _better_. Why shouldn’t they be better.

(Off in the distance, while walking to the Academy, Kokosa hears a boy ( _voice cracks every so often, higher pitched than her older cousins, likely her age or a year older, not younger_ ) pleading for someone to see him. His faint claims say he’s an Uzumaki. Not a smart idea. The last Uzumaki in Konoha ( _blond hair, blue eyes, but named Uzumaki. The Yondaime’s girlfriend was an Uzumaki, the boy was likely his son_ ) perished over a half a year ago. She shakes her head, emerging from her thoughts sat in her desk seat.)

~~/~~

Yudae is exhausted. As a low ranking member of the Aburame, he doesn’t have as many duties as the heir, Shino, but as an orphan, he wants to prove himself. Wants to show he’s worthy of the hive he hosts.

He’s the top of the class for that reason alone. His grandmother tells him to keep to himself, that his unique bugs are a secret to be kept. He doesn’t want to live his life a quiet secret. Doesn’t want to never be noteworthy.

(His bugs buzz under the thin layer of his skin, sending messages to him. _A boy in the main market, screaming, unnoticed, thin presence like he doesn’t exist, not the child ANBU, almost like a ghost, same chakra as the dead Uchiha second son, ghost, investigate?_ He brushes the beetle that crawled up his jacket collar to sit on his cheek, dismissing the claims of his bugs as fanciful stories. His bugs grumble, settling down in their network, and Yudae thinks. Ghost, huh?)

~~/~~

Nikkou sprints across the rooftops, swearing under her breath. Miri grumbles from her place inside Nikkou’s weapon pouch, and she feels bad for the little red leaf gecko. But, she’s already late to team placements from a hold up in the civilian market she stopped to help Genma with. She chuckles mirthlessly. She hasn’t even met her Team 7 yet and she’s already taking after Kakashi.

She wonders if the luck of any Team 7’s keeps multiplying, but in the wrong directions. The first Team 7, the Hokage’s team from his genin years, famously has terrible luck for being ambushed. The Sannin, ripped apart and out of the village, with no hope of them returning. Team Minato, all members killed in various battles. Team Kakashi, killed in one fell swoop, taking down the Demon of the Mist at the cost of their own lives and the lives of a whole town.

She wonders what kind of bullshit the universe will throw at her team.

(She sprints past a man sitting on the edge of a roof, silver hair swaying in the breeze. Nikkou thinks nothing of it at the time. She should have. It doesn’t matter if the old man on the fourth floor likes to sit on the roof to feed the birds. Old man Yamada never wore a flak jacket, or seemed to leak blood like a siv leaks water. But alas, Nikkou ignores the man, and when he turns to say something, all he can do is yell at her retreating back.)

~~~~~~

“Team 7, Nara Kokosa, Aburame Fudae, Hyuuga Kiju.”

Three heads around the room shoot up, all with wildly scared faces. Iruka doesn’t blame them, considering what happened to most other teams with that number.

“Your sensei will be Kurama Nikkou. She’s waiting down the hall in 206.”

The Aburame gets up first, feet dragging slightly as he leaves the room. The Nara goes after, muttering and swearing under her breath about bad luck. The Hyuuga is the most reluctant, keeping his head down but leaving fastest when he finally gets up. Iruka pities them, getting the bloody legacy of their team. He turns back to his list of students, and hopes, pathetically, that he won’t lose anymore students to whatever curse is befalling Team 7.

Gods above, he misses Naruto.

~~/~~

Nikkou slips in the window a half a minute before the first of her new team practically throws open the door. The Nara kunoichi enters the room with a glare on her face and throws herself down on one of the chairs. The Hyuuga enters next, head down and quick to slip into the chair furthest from the angry kunoichi. The Aburame enters last, settling down in the chair closest to the door with a quiet buzz of insect wings.

Miri sticks her head out from Nikkou’s weapon pouch, murmuring as she scurries up towards Nikkou’s hair. The little red gecko mutters in her ear, a nonsensical ramble about bees.

The Hyuuga clears his throat, and shrinks when Nikkou turns her attention to him.

“Uh, sensei? There’s a leaf in your hair.”

Nikkou snickers, before shaking her head lightly.

“That’s Miri. She’s one of my summons.”

The Hyuuga shrinks further in on himself, and she sighs. She really must bring him out of his shell.

“Follow me.”

Nikkou strides out of the room, spear clicking against her red painted armor. Her team follows after her with questions on their tongues as she leads them to training ground 13. She figures the Memorial Stone is an auspicious place to teach her first team meeting. Once there, she turns around, nipping at her thumb to summon more of her geckos. They burst into existence with a large puff of smoke, and one of them butts into her palm for head pats.

Her team, barring the Aburame, look rather put off by her summons. Nikkou gets it. One of the gecko, brown with grey flecks, and the smallest of her summoned help, even if he is the size of a large dog, circles her genin and bumps the Nara in the calf with his head.

“Now, I have chosen to take you on as a team regardless of the outcome of this test.”

The Hyuuga looks extremely relieved, and Nikkou makes a note to look into that later. Or have Miri spy. She’s not picky.

“I find the Academy training on tactics to be very lacking, evasion techniques especially. My test for you is to evade my geckos for one hour. If one of you manages to do that, I'll get you lunch. Any suggestions?”

The Nara’s head shoots up, and she blurts out the name of an Akimichi restaurant downtown. Nikkou nods, and pulls out a stopwatch from under her hip armor. She looks up, before clicking the start button.

“I suggest you all run.”

Her genin look at her geckos, before booking it in three different directions.

Nikkou stabs her spear into the soft dirt next to the Memorial Stone, jumping to settle herself on the top of one of the training logs. She pulls a shuriken out of her weapons pouch, twirling it around her fingers as the clock steadily clicks towards the hour mark.

It takes twenty minutes for Poki, a black gecko the size of a small horse, to drag her Hyuuga out of the woods by the back of his turtleneck. He flops against the post she’s sitting on, and she drops a water bottle in his lap. He murmurs something before taking a small sip of water.

It takes fifteen more minutes for the Aburame to be nudged out of the woods by Kawa, her brown and grey gecko. Nikkou tosses him another water bottle, and makes another note on her palm. The Aburame collapses face first on the ground next to the Hyuuga, and groans.

Nikkou snorts, still scanning around for her kunoichi student. Her timer hits the hour mark, and she nods, clicking the timer off. A few hand signs and a flick of chakra and her larger summons dismiss themselves. She hops off the training post, placing Miri back on her shoulder.

“And that’s time.”

She clears her throat, before cupping her hands around her mouth.

“You can come back now!”

Nikkou’s voice echoes around the training ground, and a few minutes later the Nara tumbles out of the woods behind the Memorial Stone. She flops down next to her teammates, and Nikkou reaches down to brush the little leafy twigs out of her student’s hair. She lowers her voice, and crouches down next to her students.

“I’m going to go grab lunch. Any requests?”

The Nara mumbles something about ribs, and the others shrug.

Er, that’s what Nikkou assumes the Aburame does. He is still facedown in the dirt. She stands back up, brushing imaginary dirt off the front of her skirt.

“Stay here, I’ll be back in a bit,” She claps her hands together. “We can all introduce ourselves then!”

Nikkou turns, strolling out of Training Ground 13, whistling some random tune her mother whistles when cleaning her weapons.

Her students can’t get into too much trouble while she’s gone.

~~/~~

Nikkou jogs back into the training ground with bags of takeout, to find her students to be nowhere in sight. She swivels her head, before looking up at the huge tree in the center of the field. There’s two sets of feet hanging off one of the branches, and Nikkou steps forward, standing underneath the branches of the tree.

Her students are up in the tree. The Aburame and the Nara are sitting side by side, with their Hyuuga teammate sitting on top of them, leaning against the tree trunk.

Nikkou sighs, setting the bags of takeout near her feet.

“Can you get out of the tree? Without landing on me,” she adds as the Hyuuga goes to scramble down.

Her students hop off their branch perch, crowding around her. The Nara ignores her completely, going straight for the styrofoam container labeled ribs.

“What happened here?”

“Sensei,” the Aburame says quietly. “There’s ghosts by the Memorial Stone.”

Nikkou laughs, waving a hand next to her head.

“Don’t be ridiculous, there’s no such thing as,”

Nikkou turns to the Memorial Stone, where three small figures in pink, orange and blue are sitting in a half circle around a silver haired man.

“Sweet mother of Chakra, those are ghosts.”


	2. In which Nikkou decides to adopt three kids and (briefly) insults the Uchiha

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is a shit ton of descriptions and og team 7 is there for like a scene akdfjasl;fj;
> 
> they show up next chapter too dw

Nikkou creeps forward, stepping next to the kids quietly. She tugs her spear out of the dirt, going to turn around when one of the ghosts, the kid in orange, pops up in front of her. Nikkou shrieks, falling backwards and swinging her spear towards the kid. It passes through him, leaving a wavering strip in his torso for a few moments. The other two kids hover behind the orange genin, heads tipped to the sides in curiosity.

Nikkou scrambles to her feet, stepping backwards and holding the dark grey blade of her spear at the ghosts.

And they really can’t be anything but ghosts. Her mother told her ghost stories when she was a child, and all of them featured the little blue green balls of fire currently bobbing cheerfully in the air around the Memorial Stone.

The pink haired girl pushes her way to the front of the group. Her voice echoes when she talks, and reminds Nikkou of the time her cousin Katami got stuck in one of the old, dry wells in the clan compound.

“You can _see_ us?”

Nikkou motions for her students to come closer to her, so she can protect them just that little bit better, and pulls on her chakra, swirling it in the subtle waves that preface a genjutsu. Proper genjutsu, not the cheat kind that the Uchiha used their dojutsu for.

Her students don’t get the memo that they could be dangerous, and two of her students, the Nara and the Aburame, duck around her, trying their best to tackle the ghosts. The Hyuuga ducks behind her instead, hiding his face behind her shoulder. Nikkou drops her spear, giving the Hyuuga a small, slightly shaky smile before walking over to grab her other students by the backs of their collars, hauling them away from the ghosts.

“Alright break it up. You can’t touch them anyway stop trying to fight - OW!”

Nikkou drops her only female student, and the little Nara tries to tackle the silver haired ghost.

“That’s a good way to get cursed,” Nikkou mutters.

She puts the Aburame down, and clamps a hand over the bite mark on her arm. She sighs, rolls her shoulders to lose some of the stress tension, and wishes she wore her arm guards today. Nikkou grabs the Nara by the shoulders, marching her back towards her other students, as the silver haired jounin grabs the little blond, who looked about three seconds away from fighting her kunoichi student.

“Naruto for the love of every god in the Pure Lands, what do you think this is going to accomplish?”

No fucking way.

Nikkou whips her head back around, almost dislodging Miri from her perch next to her left ear. Now that she isn’t as worried, and can properly look at the ghosts, more information practically floods her mind.

Silver haired jounin wearing a black face mask and a slanted hitai-ate. Orange jumpsuit that was paint splattered every time Nikkou saw the genin wearing it. Pink hair and a red qipao, with a white circle near the edge of the hem. Dark blue shirt, with the stupid high collar the rest of the clan wore, and an Uchiha crest on the back.

Motherfucker. Of course she had to deal with the ghosts of the previous Team 7 the first day she met her students. Is this karma for some shit she did in a past life? 

Nikkou pushes her students behind her, and slowly backs away. The farther away she gets, the less she feels like she’s going to suffocate, and eventually the team makes their way back to the tree at the entrance to the training ground.

Her poor Hyuuga student is quietly crying, and her other two students are panting like they just ran a marathon.

“Sensei,” the Aburame says, as quiet as he can. “What do we do?”

Nikkou sighs, tapping her fingers against the boning in her armor’s stomach panel. She glances around, eyes landing on the abandoned bags of take out boxes, before flicking back to her spear, lying on the ground near the ghosts.

 _Yeah, no, fuck that,_ Nikkou thinks, before picking up the bags near her feet.

“Let’s go to my clan’s compound. We can introduce ourselves then, because I can’t keep calling you by your family names.”

Nikkou spins on her heel, power walking across the bridge and out of the training ground, her genin right on her heels. Her arm still twinges faintly from the kunoichi’s surprisingly sharp teeth. She leads them through the back alleys and the less populated streets, so they don’t have to be seen after encountering the ghosts.

Nikkou is still fairly shaken up about it, and she’s seen a lot of shit on missions.

She dips her head in greeting at Aimu, who’s sitting down, leaning against a tree inside the compound, a baby okapi sprawled across her lap. Aimu flicks her fingers in return, before returning to the book she was reading. Nikkou ushers her genin in front of her, pointing out the people in her clan as she goes and introduces them.

They work their way through the winding path through the compound until they come to the second largest house in the compound, where Nikkou lives with her mother. She steps up onto the engawa, sliding open the front door to call a greeting to her mother. She gets a faint response from maybe the kitchen, and nudges her genin in the door. Her mother’s old shinobi sandals are sitting in the genkan, next to a pair of gladiator style sandals she recognizes as her cousin Yakumo’s.

Nikkou sits on the short step, setting her shin guards and the takeout aside and tugging at her boot laces until she can kick them off, leaning them against the wall. Her students follow suit after unfreezing, leaving their shoes near the step. Nikkou picks up her shin guards and tucks them under her arm, stepping into the house proper. She finds her mother and her cousin sitting around their dining table with a tea set between them.

“Mother, Yakumo,” Nikkou brings her genin into the room, and her cousin gestures for them to sit. “These are my genin. We haven’t been properly introduced yet but they’re here.” She turns her attention to the genin. “Kids, this is my mother, Mira, and my cousin, Yakumo.”

Her kids greet her family quietly, and Nikkou nudges the Hyuuga softly until he sits down at the table. She puts the empty takeout containers in the trash, before she ducks out of the kitchen, walking through the hallways until she reaches her room. Her shin guards get tossed on her bed, and her chest armor and hip plates get similarly discarded.

She jogs back to the kitchen, where her mother is quietly entertaining her still scared genin while Yakumo brews another pot of tea. She sits herself down next to the Aburame, accepting the teacup he slides her way.

“Mother, could you heal my arm?”

Her mother sighs, before gesturing for her arm.

“What happened?” Her mother asks, pushing up her sleeve. Nikkou laughs quietly.

“I startled the Nara. She has surprisingly sharp teeth.”

Yakumo comes back with a pot of tea, and a wood tray tucked under her arm. The Hyuuga pops out of his seat, taking the tray. Yakumo blinks a few times, before gathering the genin’s teacups, setting them on the tray. Nikkou reaches over with the arm not in her mother’s grasp, setting it next to the others. Yakumo sets the teapot on the tray as well, and the Hyuuga looks, faintly worried is the expression Nikkou would call it. Mira lets go of her arm, and the bite mark is nothing but a faint scar now.

Nikkou gets up, taking the tray from her Hyuuga student. When he goes to protest, with a panicked expression, Nikkou shoos him towards the backyard engawa with soft words. He goes, but only after being tugged at by the kunoichi. Yakumo whispers to her, mindful of the kids not even twenty feet away.

“Why did,” Yakumo stops to flail her arms. “He looked like he was going to cry. Going by the look on his face it wasn’t the first time today.”

Nikkou sighs, moving towards the open door.

“We had,” She blows a breath of air out sharply. “A scare would be the best way to put it. And from what little I read off their files, he’s Branch Hyuuga, not Main Hyuuga. There’s definitely some ingrained behavior, or something.”

Yakumo, ever pragmatic from nearly ten years as the Kurama Clan head, huffs and calls the Hyuuga clan idiots. Nicely, as Yakumo is nothing if not polite. Their clan has dwindled severely, and Yakumo has never liked the Hyuuga for separating _their_ clan members. Ever. Calls their seals and forced branches stupid.

Nikkou sighs quietly, moving to go outside, when her mother calls for her.

“Nikkou,” She says, every bit as scary as when Nikkou was a genin. “Make sure they know they have a place here. They’ll need it at some point.”

Nikkou dips her head, finally heading out the door to properly meet her students. She sets the tray down on the wood of the engawa, before sitting cross legged and pouring a cup of tea. She gestures to the space around her.

“Help yourselves.”

The Aburame caves first, sitting next to her. She scoots the tea tray over to the middle of their circle. Once all the kids have sat down, and the Hyuuga is, again, the most hesitant, she clears her throat.

“Now that,” She waves one of her hands towards the training grounds. “All that’s all over. Introductions!”

Nikkou hums, before pointing at the Aburame.

“You go first.”

The poor boy sucks in a breath at the same time he tries to take a sip of tea, ending in a coughing fit. Nikkou pats him on the back, and sets both their teacups down so nothing spills. He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, and Nikkou lets him be, watching him push his sunglasses back up the bridge of his nose.

“Uh, hello?”

The other two genin snicker, and the Aburame flushes faintly, ducking his head down.

“My name is Aburame Yudae.”

Yudae picks his teacup back up, looking at the Nara next to him. She gives them a giant grin, looking much, much different than the rest of her clan.

“Nara Kokosa.”

She nudges the Hyuuga with her foot, and he looks up from his tea, yet to actually take a sip. His voice is barely there when he speaks.

“I’m Hyuuga Kiju.”

Nikkou clasps her hands together, empty teacup abandoned on the wood of the engawa.

“You all have probably been told, but my name is Kurama Nikkou.”

She smiles at them, and gets two smiles and a small twitch back.

“Now. I want you to tell me two things you are good at. It doesn’t have to be related to being a shinobi. I’ll go first. I’m good at fighting with a spear, and I'm good at painting.”

Kokosa throws a hand in the air. Nikkou nods at her.

“Ok! I’m good at,” She stops, blinking at nothing. “I’m good at kunai throwing? And, um, I’m getting better at the Nara Hiden.”

Kokosa elbows Kiju, startling him.

“You next!”

“Uh. Okay. I’m good at cooking, and I’m good at running long distances.”

Both genin turn to look at Yudae, and he looks back, sunglasses slipping down his nose.

“OH! Uh, I’m good at photography, and, erm, senbon throwing.”

Alright, Nikkou can work with what she got. Maybe. She sighs, standing up and picking up the tray. Kiju again bolts up, trying to help her with a tiny task. She shoos him, plucking the empty teacup from his hands as the other two genin set their’s on the tray. She nudges the door back open with her foot, setting the tray next to the kitchen sink. Her genin follow behind her like little ducklings, and she turns to them, leaning back against the counter.

“Alright. You all are free to go home, but be at Training Ground 13 tomorrow at,” Nikkou hums, tapping her fingers against her thigh. “Let’s say 10am. Bring your weapons and other paraphernalia.”

She leads her students back to the entrance of the compound, waving them off with a little smile. When she turns back, she swears she sees Hatake in the forest around Daruwa’s house, but when she blinks the man disappears.

She shakes it off, working her way back home. She’ll deal with the thought of ghosts tomorrow.


End file.
